Do the Right Thing is the Spike Lee film that I've seen more than any other.  I vaguely remember going to see it in a theater during its initial run, but I could be remembering that wrong.  I am sure that we took a group to see Mo' Better Blues  the weekend that it opened, but I can't place exactly where I first saw Do the Right Thing.  I'm a pretty unabashed fan of Spike's work, even though I recognize that lately he's had at least as many duds as sucesses.  For every 25th Hour there's a She Hate Me.  I can deal with that, though, because Spike Lee gave us Do the Right Thing and even 20 years later, it still seems fresh.

I was excited to see a new 20th Anniversary print of this movie at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.  The Fox is a great place to see classic movies--I've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dr. Strangelove, and A Clockwork Orange there in summers past.  But it didn't hit me just how cool it would be to see Spike Lee's masterpiece there until I remembered the connections that Lee has to Atlanta.  A new print of a film that's amongst my favorites of all time, screened at the Fox with Spike and others from the production in attendance?  Hell yes! 

I've been to a Q&A with Spike Lee before, so I wasn't all that excited about seeing him answer questions after the film.  What did excite me was knowing that we were sharing the movie with the people who made it and starred in it, their friends and families, and a couple thousand other people who were all touched in some way by that movie.  Going to see Revenge of the Sith at the Fox was fun, but this felt somehow important.

I used to think that Do the Right Thing ended about ten minutes too late.  After Sal's pizza shop burns down and the image fades away, that always seemed like the perfect ending.  Now, having seen the movie 20 years later and with a huge audience, I take that back.  The last bit of denoument gives Mookie a great character moment and it lets everyone cool off a little to think about what's happened.  Like any great movie, I'm still finding things that I love about Spike Lee's masterpiece.  People want Spike to make another movie as important and incindiary as this one, but I really don't think he needs to.  We can continue to watch Do the Right Thing and Spike can continue to expand into documentaries and films like Inside Man and we'll all be better for it.